Government shutdowns often target women

Published 10:09 am, Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Attention ladies: That rundown feeling you experienced last month just might have been the weight of the government balanced on your shoulders.

October's government shutdown is over -- for now -- but in recent history, the government has shut down 18 times. Six of those times -- arguably seven, but let's not quibble -- have been the end result of arguments about funding women's health and/or welfare. October's two-week shutdown was a petulant attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which contains an unprecedented amount of initiatives aimed at women, including extending free preventive care (birth control), maternity coverage and eliminating the so-called gender rating, where women are charged more for insurance simply because they are women.

Obviously, those kinds of radical stances cannot be supported. And so the government wheezed to a halt.

Nothing new here. Shutdowns in the `70s tended to center around disagreements over funding women's reproductive health -- particularly, the Medicaid funding of abortions. The government paid for abortions -- just like any medical procedure -- right after Roe v. Wade, but in 1976, the Hyde Amendment began limiting the circumstances under which

Medicaid would pay for an abortion. Today, abortion is covered in cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment.

And who seeks abortions? Well, women. But the meanness doesn't stop at a woman's private parts.

In September, Washington-based Wider Opportunities for Women issued a report that explored states' economic security and found that 70 percent of single mothers who work full time do not earn enough to be considered economically secure. The number of at-risk single mothers is higher among black women -- 77 percent -- and Hispanics -- 83 percent.

A recent Pew Research Center report said that women (23 percent) are nearly twice as likely as men (12 percent) to have used the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- also known as food stamps -- at some point in their lives.

And guess what? Back in September, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to slash $40 billion from the SNAP budget, because -- according to every news report I could find -- some of our U.S. representatives believed there is widespread abuse in the system, and gosh-darn it those people should go out and get a job.

In fact, overwhelmingly, SNAP recipients aren't loafers. They're women. There's a difference. The incidence of fraud is rare, but that doesn't stop politicians of a certain stripe from digging in. And no matter their misguided attempts at fighting a non-problem, SNAP recipients saw an automatic 5 percent cut in their benefits the first of this month, after funds from the American Recovery Act